Busy, busy...

The holiday season hit me like a Mack truck. Before I realized it, I was going crazy trying to get things done. I had gifts to purchase, boutique orders to fill, travel plans to make, and things to look forward to and plan after the holidays. So, yeah, it was like I got caught up in a tornado with one kid in each arm and no clue how to hold on to anything else.

My sibs and I with my mom and her sister.

I did manage to get through my list of Christmas gifts. Of course, since this year we took our first ever family pictures, those became the gifts for many of our family members. I also had a few gifts that I made by hand like a scarf for a friend, slippers for a friend's kiddo, and earrings for my sister. We actually were able to go up to Dallas and have Christmas with my family which was awesome and my mom was crazy giddy about it since all my brothers and sisters were there and all my mom's grandkids. The weekend after Christmas, Taran's parents came to visit so we had a second Christmas celebration, complete with turkey dinner. I was giddy to have a real Christmas celebration at our home. Since the past couple of years we haven't been able to go anywhere, we didn't do a whole lot and it felt just like any other day to me. Not this year! It was fantastic!

Just before Christmas, I had a diaper cake I was working on. It was a huge challenge since I had to hand make many of the items on it. The gamer/geek/StarCraft theme doesn't lend itself easily to diaper cake making due to the sheer lack of available baby items of that theme so my only choice was to not fill the request for the theme, do a shabby job incorporating random stuff, or make it myself for a clean cohesive theme related cake. I picked the last option since I'm not all about putting forth half efforts on these. In the end it turned out great, but it was crazy time consuming at a very busy time of year. I managed though and I couldn't be more proud of the end result.

Nursery set for one of the mamas.
My first rag quilt. It came out awesome!
I was so proud of myself!

Just after Christmas some of the moms in my mommy group threw a baby shower for two moms that were expecting babies. I had to hurry to get gifts together for these mamas. Since both were cloth diapering mamas, I couldn't very well do a traditional diaper cake which is my stand-by gift, so I opted to make each mama a set of nursery items including a blanket, blocks, hat, and burp cloth. I put them together in cakes for them. They turned out adorable. The extra kicker was that I was able to use a lot of materials I already had (with a few new ones) so I cleared out some of my craft purchases which have been taking up space on our dining room table. Yay!

During that time period, I also had an order for two pairs of shoes, my first shipped order for my baby boutique! Super exciting! Shortly after the baby shower, I had an order for another diaper cake which I had to get to my friend in less than a week. Fortunately, this theme was much easier, but so incredibly cute and I was super excited to make this cake too!

Speaking of all that with my boutique, I reached over 100 fans on Facebook. I decided to hold a drawing for a discount on a next order as well as an auction. I put several items from my inventory in the auction and added a few more new things that I made up recently like burp cloths, crocheted hair clips, and a baby beanie. I wanted a good variety in the auction which turned out great. Several items sold which is also super exciting. Next time I run and auction, because I'm sure I will, I'm going to do some more publicity so that hopefully I get a few more bids and sales.

You'd think that after all that, things were slowing down for me, but no. Last week alone, we had appointments for August, Simon (the cat), and Noah. August is 9 mo old! I can't believe it. His appointment went well and we got a good report, so to speak. Simon had his appointment Thursday and he also is doing well. Noah went to the ENT for a recheck on his tubes on Friday. One tube is out, the other is in place; everything looks good.

In my spare time (really? That exists?), I've been working on shortening my stack of "to read" magazines. I've also been working on a few crochet projects like some plush veggies and other ideas for hair clips for the boutique.

As if I didn't have enough to do, I've taken on this need to clean obsessively. I think it's a mix of having family come into town and an urge to watch the show "Hoarders" that is putting me into clean-up overdrive. My house is cleaner than it's been in a long time. And even after the in-laws left, I've lost a bit of momentum, but I've still done some of that nitty gritty detail cleaning that we all like to put off like wiping down the cabinets and cleaning the appliances and baseboards.

Ok, well, this blog post is WAY too long. It actually was written over a couple of days and now I need to go bake cookies!